Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (29 page)

At length, when the gentlemen rejoined them, a few of them chirping merry in response to the large quantities of spirits which they had imbibed, most of the ladies were persuaded to the whist and faro tables. As Clarissa was about to take her place at one, Hadrian smoothly interceded.

“Mrs. Willoughby,” he said loud enough for any to hear, “I heard your boast to my cousin Bascombe at dinner that you are very knowledgeable on the subject of English architecture. I shan’t be convinced of it until you satisfy my curiosity on the point. There is a piece of Wolfscote not fifty yards from my door which may serve as your first test. Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” Clarissa replied, “Though I don’t believe my boast was quite so vainly worded.”

“Damme! Ramsbury would take the prettiest puss from the room,” groused Lord Kennan, a crotchety-tempered man who had paid his addresses to Clarissa at length before dinner. “Don’t keep her dawdling too long in the night air, Ramsbury. Wouldn’t want her to catch cold before I’ve stood a set of dances with her. Dammed fine figure on that ‘un!” he added loudly for his own deafness’s sake.

Clarissa followed Hadrian out of the salon and into the entrance hall where, to her surprise, a maid stood holding her bonnet and pelisse while Hadrian’s valet held his hat and walking stick. She nearly smiled as she realized that he had planned their exit.

“I remember saying little or nothing about architecture at dinner,” Clarissa said when they had donned their things and the earl had followed her out the front door. “You might have thought of a more plausible excuse to bring us together.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hadrian answered, his smile full of mischief in the moonlit night. He took her hand and folded it familiarly into the crook of his arm. “We’ve a bit of a walk, if you don’t mind. Are your slippers sturdy enough?”

“Yes. Where are we going?”

He slanted a glance at her but her face was nearly obscured by the shadow of her bonnet brim. “Does it matter? You are not afraid of me.”

“I am not, though I will admit that I should be.”

“That, madam, you must explain.”

Clarissa suddenly felt very uncommunicative. He was walking beside her, talking as if they had never exchanged anything more intimate than their thoughts on politics and roses. Yet they had been lovers.

“Dangerous territory, that,” she heard him whisper in that deep sonorous voice that made her melt in the middle, and she knew that he had divined her thoughts. She walked on, thankful that he did not press her on that topic.

They did not speak again as they crossed the carriageway. He opened a gate to lead her through a short stretch of the house’s grounds. A line of ancient yews stood like sentinels at the rear of the house. The warm night air smelled of new-mown grass and wild herbs. The spicy odors of pinks and cabbage roses carried on the breeze from the nearby garden, invading the grassy scents of the night. At the back of the lawn they stepped off flagstones into a grassy meadow made greenish black and silver by the three-quarter moon.

As she walked beside him, feeling the heat of his body where her hand lay curled in the crook of his elbow, an odd shaky feeling invaded Clarissa. The gentlest of breezes stirred the curl on her right cheek and it grazed her skin like a lover’s caress. How gentle this man could be when he chose. The touch of his fingers was a memory that had occupied too many of her dreaming hours. He must not be allowed to again invade her waking ones until she knew without a doubt where his interest lay. Judging by his actions of the morning, he was far from indifferent to Soltana. Into the shakiness came a tiny throbbing thread of pain.

She heard the gurgling sounds of running water long before she determined its source as they descended a shallow hill to where the trees drew thickly in a long curving line that betrayed the contours of a riverbank. From the nearby ha-ha a nightingale sang its singular tune.

The moment she saw it, she did not have to ask why he had brought her here. As they moved past a line of trees into an opening along the riverbank, she saw it gleaming like alabaster in the moonlight. It was a Palladian bridge. The structure was a double colonnade between a pair of porticoes resting on the three arches of the bridge. The classical lines, blurred and softened by moonlight, seemed timeless, ancient, and without a trace of nostalgia that marred most attempts to copy antiquity.

“What say you, little architect?” Hadrian said softly, as he paused to allow her a fuller inspection of the bridge.

“No more than a century old, my lord,” she answered quietly. “Though the spirit is that of the Italian architect Palladio, I would guess it is the work of William Kent.”

“You
are
a scholar of buildings.” Clearly, he was impressed.

“My father spent the early years of his military life in the Mediterranean and enjoyed sketching antiquities. He gave his books and notes to me when I went to live with him on the Peninsula. He was partial to Kent’s work because of his faithfulness to Palladio’s
Quattro libri dell’architettura,
a copy of which my uncle Quentin had obtained for him while in Italy.”

“You read and speak Italian?”

“I know a little Latin, my lord.”

“You are a student of what other tongues?” Hadrian asked in Arabic.

Clarissa looked up at the sharp strength of his profile revealed in the stark moonlight. “I think, my lord, that you are confusing me with Soltana.”

“I beg your pardon,” he replied in English. “But I thought you might know something of Arabic.” He again took her hand but this time he did not place it on his arm but held it clasped firmly and warmly in his own. “Come and see a view of the house from the bridge. It allows Wolfscote to be seen in the framework of a perfect miniature.”

They moved to the end of the bridge and began walking up the slight incline. “It is a copy of the Palladian bridge at Wilton House. A great-uncle much admired it and had this replica made. It is completely without usefulness as the path beyond it leads nowhere. But, for all that, I find it endearing. Symbol of a Blackburne’s folly. We are notoriously serious and staid, we Ramsburys.”

“Unlike the notoriously wild and reckless Holtons,” she responded, finishing what she suspected was his own thought.

They had reached the middle of the bridge, and she turned to look back at Wolfscote. Across the oily back of the dark water shot with silver ribbons of moonlight, past the embankment of the shallow hill, sat the house with its many tall open windows golden with light. Behind it, the surrounding countryside rose in static waves of night-blackened hills, enclosing the house and grounds in their protective bulk. Strangely, the sound of voices came faintly across to them when before they could not be heard. The tingling notes of a piano faded in and out. Laughter, distant and muffled, drifted near and away. The dull thudding of her heart told her that she could stand here forever, in this moonlight, with this man, and be forever happy.

“Your guests are much diverted,” Clarissa said at last, aware that too much could be assumed from her silence.

“Then they will not mind our absence.” He moved closer to her until their shoulders touched and then he raised her hand, which he still possessed, unbuttoned her glove, and drew it off. As she watched, he lifted her hand and kissed the back of it.

“Don’t!” Alarmed by the simple touch, she tried to pull away but he would not release her.

“Don’t, yourself,” he admonished gently and tucked her hand inside his coat. “Don’t be predictable, Clarissa. Not tonight.”

She did not know exactly what he meant, but it annoyed her all the same. If he thought she had come here with him to entertain him with another display of incautious passion, then he would be very much surprised! “I have reason to believe that your brother is in deep trouble,” she said in a crisp no-nonsense tone. “Financial distress, to be exact.”

If her speech surprised him, he did not show it. “How came you by this knowledge?”

She did not think it prudent to tell him that it had come to her in the form of a very impassioned love letter addressed to Soltana at Dolick House. “You will think it peculiar that I ask you not to insist upon an answer, but I must. Believe me, I would not needlessly disturb you with anything less than real knowledge.”

Hadrian considered several reasons why Emory might write to Soltana, and all of them concerned him. “Very well. What form does this distress take? Has he been gambling again?”

“I am not certain, but I should think it not unlikely that a young man in reduced circumstances might find the allure of the gaming tables too strong to resist.”

“Reduced circumstances?” He turned to her, his face a composite of dark angles and pale planes. Only his light eyes reflected the brightness in the dark. “What taradiddles has that young devil been spinning for you? He’s recently come into an inheritance that gives him ten thousand a year.”

“Ten thousand?” The amount was very generous. Then she remembered that once Hadrian that been thought dead and that for a short while Emory was to inherit all that belonged to the Earl of Ramsbury, including Wolfscote. “Perhaps when he has seen his brother wager thirty thousand at cards, the sum of his inheritance loses its attraction.”

“How do you know about that?”

Clarissa nearly bit her tongue. Incautious! Incautious! “Princess Soltana mentioned it.”

“Your tone leads me to believe that she did not give a very good accounting of me on that head, or was it her presence by my side that night which displeases you?”

“Soltana’s amusements would not give me joy.” Clarissa again tried to remove her hand from the region of his anatomy that allowed her to feel his every breath, but he held her hand firmly to his abdomen.

“You dislike Princess Soltana.”

“Of course not!”

“Then is it jealousy that makes you disparage her character?”

Clarissa kept her profile to him. “We are very different, that is all.”

“Are you? I would have thought that there is more similarity between you than difference. But then, it is the opinion of a man. I am certain a lady would see things otherwise.”

She could not stop herself from turning to him. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, that from a man’s perspective, you are both beautiful in form and in personality, a rarity. It is not idle flattery. Even your aunt and my mother would grant you both the description. You both have a passion for privacy that is exceptional in ladies so young and sheltered. One would think you shared a secret.”

Clarissa turned away. “What sort of secret? Or do you flatter yourself that you are it?”

“Brutal and unfair, my lady. I meant only that neither of you wishes to be completely understood. Princess Soltana’s actions are provoking, unstudied, reckless with natural high spirit, but not quite impudent enough to encourage reproach in her audience. While you …”

Clarissa waited for him to continue but, perversely, he chose not to. Every fiber in her body tensed. He might be hinting at a dozen things, but the conclusion was very clear: Mrs. Willoughby might behave with more outward propriety than Princess Soltana, but her actions ultimately were enough to provoke
his
reproach.

She felt her cheeks sting with the inherent desire to defend herself, but pride made her refuse to dignify his insult with an answer. She only clutched tighter the cool stone balustrade beneath her free hand until the impression of its rough surface made her fingertips and palm ache.

“Now you are angry.” He made a statement requiring no confirmation. “Perhaps you should be. I am often frank when I should be ambiguous. It is a lamentable habit of mine.”

Clarissa refused to second his statement, no matter how much she agreed with him this time.

Without any warning, he turned to her and took her in his arms, kissing her quite soundly.

“No!” Clarissa cried and pushed against him when he gave her a chance to catch her breath.

He gripped her wrists to keep her from pushing him away and the power in his fingers surprised her for it hurt her. Instantly she stopped, and her voice, when it came, was unsteady. “If you force me, you will regret it.”

He glowered down at her. His face in the moonlight was all aggression and anger, the cause of which she could not fathom. Did he think that one indiscreet moment meant that she was never again to have any say-so over the time and manner in which she might choose to again surrender herself to him?

So engrossed was she in her own thoughts and fears that she did not at first realize that his grip had slackened. But then his arms were sliding around her shoulders to bring her tightly up against his chest. “I am sorry,” he said in an emotionally ragged voice. One hand came up to smooth her cheek. “I am an impatient man, and I usually get what I want. You should not have left me in London. It was cruel.”

Clarissa shut her eyes. She had been wrong to leave him like that. She had had two weeks in which to realize that her actions had been unjust to a man who had asked her to marry him. It was perfectly natural for him to want to hold and kiss her in the moonlight. She wanted to be here, in his arms. But he could not know how frightened she was. Knowing that her desires so exactly matched his own was far more dismaying than if she had not shared his passion. For there were now new things between them: the invitation to Soltana and the fact that he had been lying in wait in her room when Soltana arrived.

She braced herself against her own desire. “Please let me go.”

He released her instantly and turned to face the house, leaning his elbows atop the balustrade. There in the moonlight, no longer touching, Clarissa suddenly felt bereft, as if she had never before been quite so alone. She knew that this was the moment to confess her doubts and ask him to make a decision. She knew that she should admit that she knew he had brought her out here to make love to her and that she had wanted him to, still did, desperately. Why, then, was she balking? Why this awful sense that everything would become nothing if she again succumbed to her feelings?

She glanced at him, needing some sense of his mood. But the moonlight only revealed the surface. There was savagery in his taut profile, anger under an iron grip. She remembered how he had fought—swiftly, economically, and with deadly intent—but the full range of his feelings was lost to her.

Trembling inside, she turned and braced her arms on the wall just inches from where he lounged. The moon was higher now above the house. By Friday, the night of the Ramsbury ball, it would be full, allowing people to travel by its light for miles to reach Wolfscote. Once more her gaze roamed over the parkland stretching out before them and she envied him every inch of ground. “It is a beautiful place, my lord. How fine it must be to own something so perfect.”

He took a twist of tobacco from one waistcoat pocket and a slip of white paper from another. When he had wrapped one in the other, he opened the tinderbox he pulled from his jacket pocket and struck a spark. The flare of flame licked the shadows from his cheekbones and touched the chiseled curves of his mouth as he bent to ignite his cigar. Just as quickly it died, leaving behind a thin spiral of bluish smoke to climb into the night.